Blizzard Unveils Remote Auction House Beta!

Have an iPhone or an iPod Touch? Looking for a way to keep tabs on your auctions and things when you’re away from your computer or you’re not logged in to WoW? Well Blizzard will have you covered…soon.

There’s been talk and discussion about a mobile app that would allow you to interact with the game and keep track of your auctions from your phone, but they’ve all been some measure of speculation and rumor up until now. Blizzard officially announced and opened the page for their Remote Auction House iPhone and iPod Touch app (and by proxy, likely the iPad although there may not be an higher-resolution version for it yet), and also announced that the app was already in beta. When it’s released, for the price of $2.99 you’ll be able to obsessively check your auctions from anywhere using items in your bank, bags, or mailbox, collect the gold from those auctions, bid on and buy out auctions up in the auction house.

I imagine the first groups of people to latch on to this app are the ones who make heavy use of the auction house, but I’ll bet the price point and availability of the app will encourage other, more casual auctioneers to use it as well – especially after a long night of raiding and killing trash, it’ll be a great way to head to the office in the morning, put all of your stuff up for auction, and not have to make yourself late in the morning by logging in “just to check the AH.”

I’m being completely selfish here, but here’s hoping for an Android app soon as well! Many thanks to Wow.com for the tipoff, and they have an amazing gallery full of images from the mobile app as well!

2 Comments so far

I’m a fan of getting to do those menial tasks like browsing the Auction House and putting up auctions when not in game. This to me is a step toward giving players the ability to be always plugged in. While it sounds terrible, I’m a fan. No joke. I’d much rather spend a portion of my lunch break putting up auctions and checking the status of auctions or looking for that “omgwtfbbq tailoring pattern” than to spend precious actual WoW hours doing it. And it can take hours, sorting through inventory, posting auctions (though it’s easier now than it used to be), etc.

What I’m not a fan of, is the fact that it is a paid subscription service. That, to me, is not okay. I already give Blizzard TONS of money a year (and then they introduce StarPony and I’m all over it like it’s the next best thing since cake!) so why make this a paid subscription? Ugh.

That’s an interesting point you have there! So – what do you think? Do you think that the new app will wind up being mandatory for someone who really wants to play the AH and make some money, and those of us who don’t use it will wind up being left behind?

The reason I throw it out there is because it cuts to the core of Microtransactions – most people are willing to accept them as part of the game as long as it doesn’t traverse the line between “fun and interesting” and “necessary to get ahead or gives people with more money an edge or benefit.” Do you think this crosses over into “money = more features” territory? :D